13
comments:

Anonymous
said...

what i do fear is that the underground molten blobs could be merging! After following the least-resistance path they could have finally carved their way to the same spot. Hence recriticality, raising underground pressure and a whole new level of disaster. Also, if this "alarm bells" are allowed to ring in the media, it looks like Tepco has totally lost hope of any control and is not trying to hide information, which is a worrying sign in itself.

I doubt the melts have arranged themselves for fission. Maybe a fizzle here and there, that would be about it. Bad enough the melts can ionize anything and everything they come in contact with.

Fuel pools now are more of a worry for a sustained reaction.

Is it radioactive dust or gases or both floating around Fukus that keep contaminating workers? Why wear masks when you can wipe off radioactivity and go home? Does TEPCO have the workers scrub and shower then get scanned before they leave?

TEPCO has started to make email alerts for the press to anyone since the beginning of this year. Prior to that, only those reporters/journalists who signed up with TEPCO could receive the alerts and the rest of us had to rely on them to tell us.

It's basically what TEPCO announces later in press conference and on the website as either handout for the press or in photos and videos library. It's about anything out of the "ordinary".

TEPCO does check workers for contamination before they leave. Workers take the bus that goes from Anti-Seismic Building to the Entry/Exit Control Station located near the gate for screening, and if they are found with contamination exceeding the level set by TEPCO (4Bq/cm2) they are decontaminated before they can leave, and they are tested with WBC later.

Corium in the ground meme is hard to eradicate. I found a diagram someone manufactured that shows Fukushima reactor building sitting on top of the ground with no foundation, and the melted fuel is deep inside the dirt, leaking into a huge aquifer.

Other things melted cores can do, like radiolysis of water where (mainly alpha particles) breakdowns H2O into hydrogen and oxygen which can be a very explosive mixture in certain ratios. So, the need to purge any pockets where hydrogen could collect using nitrogen injections like in what is left of the containments. I think they inject nitrogen in all three ruined containments 7/24.

Sure, get rid of any pent up hydrogen and force out any accompanying radioactive gases and particles at the same time. TEPCO went to great lengths to drape and duct tape flexible pipe in place in the destroyed Units so they could pipe in nitrogen for purging.

Any other time under normal circumstances with containment intact, the water and air is filtered. Here, there is no containment. Groundwater is free to interact with the melts, the melts are free to vent to air or to water and continue radioactive contaminating since the beginning on 3/11.

It is all rather simple and complicated but unstoppable without contained cores melted or not.

Fuel rods that shit spent uranium pellets will be the next headache if earthquakes don't spoil the removal plan.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

About This Site

Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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